Sunday, July 20, 2008

I just saw Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog last night. If you read this today you need to go check it out now before you can't get it for free after midnight tonight. It's a very funny 40 minute web musical faux video blog in the vein of lonelygirl15, but with higher production values and Neil Patrick Harris singing.

It got me thinking heavily about new-media. Dr. Horrible was made by Joss Whedon with money from his own pocket. He and his collaborators wrote and made it during the Writer's Striker earlier this year as a way of saying to their fellow writers and actors and other non-mucky-muck Hollywood friends that it is possible to do high profile media without the attachment to a major studio. You can read Joss's own words here. After tonight it can be downloaded for a nominal fee from iTunes, which I highly recommend. You can do that here. There is also a DVD with a supposed "musical commentary" and extras coming out.

Ok commercial done. Sorry about that. And back to my thinking brain.

Watching it got me thinking about new-media, indie films, and the accessibility of the internet. It got me thinking, more than anything else, that we (by which I mean myself and my many filmmaking friends at Columbia) can be doing this. We could be making this. Low-budget, high traffic, the internet is rife with opportunities.

So I'm hoping this week to get together with my cohort and collaborator, Duke, and start to think seriously about a story. I'm already putting the feelers out for potential interested film people. I have a producer in mind who may be interested if she's not too busy.

And that's the idea. Make something flashy and interesting that people can download. And if they like it, maybe they'll buy t-shirts, or something, I dunno. Maybe make money, would like to break even at best. But mostly just want to create and get my name out there.